7 Handy Tips For Creating A Great Blog

Content marketing is very popular right now, and blogging is a huge part of it. Creating a blog is easy. Creating a blog that people like to read and share is a little harder. Below are a few tips to help you out when you’re creating your blog.

1. Use high quality feature images

There are plenty of places where you can find lots of free, high quality photos for your feature image. Spend a few minutes searching for a high quality image. Avoid images that are super cheesy and look like they’re from the 90’s internet era. You can find a bunch of sites to get great photography here on the Photography page.

If you don’t want to use photography, creating a feature image out of graphics is a way to make your content stand out and look original. Create a feature image out of your brand colours with simple graphics like the one I have used on this post. For another example of a great feature images that are in a graphic style, check out what the guys are doing here Solo.

2. Make it easy to read

There’s nothing worse than the type on a blog being hard to read. Make the type large and easy on the eye. Fonts I recommend are serif fonts like Merriweather for the body copy set to at least 16pt in size. The font on this blog is set to 18pt. Ever wonder why everyone loves Medium? It’s because they’ve made their type really easy on the eye. It’s a joy to read.

3. Don’t have too many things on the page

For the love if Pete keep the number of items on the page to a bear minimum. People are at your blog to read the story. Keep all other non essential items out of the way of the content. Ideally you would just have a feature image, a headline, body copy and author bio.

4. Avoid using popups

Yes it’s tempting to put those email subscription boxes on your blog to gather subscribers, but man they are annoying and often put readers off coming back. Email subscription boxes are fine but don’t make them annoying and take over the page.

5. Make it personal

People like to know who wrote the blog post so be sure to include the author and a short bio. It’s also nice to include a photo to bring a friendliness to the post.

6. Don’t make the page too wide

When type is too wide on the page it makes it harder to read. Be sure to make the width of the page about 3/4 the total width of your blog. Again Medium.com is a great reference to how wide the text on the page should be.

7. Make the posts easy to share

Share buttons are important, remember to add them and make them clear and simple for someone to share your blog post. On Makerbook I use a WordPress plugin by the guys at App Sumo.